Nancy Pelosi to announce plans Wednesday

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi will announce on Wednesday morning in Washington whether she will run again to lead Democrats in the minority, after failing to win the net 25 seats she needed to regain the Speaker’s gavel that she lost in 2010 after four years as the highest ranking female politician in U.S. history.

San Francisco voters re-elected Pelosi last Tuesday with 84.7 percent of the vote to the seat she has held since 1987. She has promised to finish that term, but has been mum about whether she will run again, at age 72, to lead Democrats. Colleagues have said she has the job if she wants it.

Before the election, Pelosi set off a torrent of speculation about her intentions by scheduling leadership elections for after Thanksgiving. Leaders usually schedule elections quickly to consolidate their support among members. Democrats picked up at least seven House seats, including as many as six in California, but fell far short of the number they needed to retake the House majority.

But Pelosi is a prodigious fundraiser for fellow Democrats. Since entering the leadership in 2002, she has raised $328 million; in this last election cycle, her total was 692 events that raised $85.1 million. No one has yet challenged her for the leadership and she enjoys deep loyalty among liberals.

Pelosi defied conventional wisdom after her loss of the Speakership in the historic 2010 GOP landslide by staying on as minority leader. She was challenged by conservative Democrats but easily prevailed.

She played an important role in the debt-ceiling standoff summer before last, forcing Republicans to put Pentagon spending on the chopping block, failing a broader agreement on deficit reduction. That set the stage for the so-called “fiscal cliff” of scheduled tax increases and spending cuts that the current lame-duck session of Congress must resolve before Jan. 1. Pelosi may want to have a hand in those negotiations.

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz, D-Fla., told a television interviewer Tuesday she would be “shocked” if Pelosi stepped down. Likewise Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., whom many believe Pelosi would like to see fill her shoes if she does step aside, said Tuesday that his bet is Pelosi will run for minority leader again.